They moved past the pond slowly with their footsteps remaining soft against the leaf litter, their breathing controlled.
The Bumbodusks continued drinking, occasionally snorting or shuffling their positions, but showing no aggressive reaction to the humans’ presence.
The pond gradually fell behind them, swallowed by distance and the thick vegetation. But as a roaring sound shattered the relative quiet, all three of them turned, their heads snapping back toward the pond simultaneously.
A massive bipedal wyvern descended from above, smashing through the canopy in an explosion of broken branches and torn leaves. Its body was easily twenty feet long from snout to tail.
Bone armor covered its hide with thick plates overlapping like armor. Its wings spread wide to control its descent before folding as it crashed down onto one of the Bumbodusks.
The impact drove the boar-beast to its knees. It produced a screech, the sound of pain and fury that echoed through the forest.
The wyvern’s head lashed out, and its jaws closed on another Bumbodusk’s side.
The jaws bit into one of the few areas not protected by spikes, and then the wyvern’s body began to glow, the light building beneath its bone armor in pulsing waves.
A stream of flas erupted from its mouth, washing over the trapped Bumbodusk in a torrent of fire. The creature’s scream rang out as its brown fur ignited, flas spreading across its body with terrible speed.
The other Bumbodusks roared in collective rage. They charged as a group towards the Wyvern with surprising speed. Their tusks drove into the wyvern’s flanks and legs, the impacts resonating like hamr strikes. The wyvern was pushed off its initial victim, forced backward by the coordinated assault.
But it didn’t fall as its bone armor absorbed the impacts with so cracks. It roared back at the Bumbodusks, flas flickering from between its teeth as it glared down.
Reinhard’s eyes widened while Marie’s eyes shined, but she turned away from the battle. "It’s a Bone Wyvern, and this is one of their hunting grounds. Let’s go before it believes we should also beco its al."
The trio rushed forward imdiately while the sounds of battle behind them had intensified. The roars and screeches overlap, the ground shaking with impacts as massive bodies collided, the crackling rush of flas.
After a few seconds, they saw the passageway ahead.
They reached it within seconds and continued inside, the narrow walls of stone and earth imdiately muffling the sounds of combat behind them.
They moved through the passage that was steering them north, the passageway oddly had walls here that were irregular. Sotis stone, sotis packed dirt held together by thick root systems, and sotis roots breaking through.
Reinhard’s attention caught on unusual growths appearing along the passage floor and climbing the sides of trees.
It was a cluster of mushrooms that were vivid blue and bright yellow, that stood out starkly against the browns and greys of bark.
They grew in patches, so were stuck together, and others were sprawling across entire sections of ground.
Marie’s eyes widened, her body tensing imdiately. "Stay away from them when you’re passing by." Her voice carried sharp urgency. "They’ll release their spores if they feel we’re close."
Reinhard’s gaze fixed on the nearest cluster, which was the blue ones, and asked. "Are they lethal to us?"
Marie nodded with a grave look. "While normally a Beast Master is immune to normal toxins and poison, the spores in the Monster Zones have adapted to creating doses that are good enough to harm even a Bone Wyvern."
Reinhard shivered involuntarily before frowning and then asking. "How far away do we have to be?"
"About ten inches away," Marie said, already adjusting her path to give bigger room to a particularly large blue cluster. "But if you do get close, then yell ’spores’ so we all can run. If we get hit by the green spores, it will paralyze us. And the blue mushroom will create toxins that will make so of our limbs numb and unable to be moved."
Reinhard’s eyes widened in disbelief before he gritted his teeth as mories and images he’d rather forget began to surface.
He knew better than anyone how dangerous it was to be paralyzed, to have limbs that wouldn’t respond to your commands.
Reinhard had seen people injected with paralysis poison in back alleys and abandoned buildings. Watched them try to fight, to flee, their eyes wide with terror as their bodies betrayed them.
Watched what ca after, when they couldn’t move anymore. It was usually those who were weaker who fell victim to such tactics, or those dark groups willing to do anything to defeat their opposition.
With even sotis the weak one using it against the strong.
Reinhard even recalled a ti when an enemy gang had tried to raise the resistance of its n by filling the food they ate with limb-numbing poison. Then, forcing them to push through consuming it daily to build tolerance through forced exposure and suffering.
Most hadn’t survived the process.
Reinhard hands clenched briefly at his sides before he forced them to relax. They moved past the mushroom clusters with care, each of them giving the mushrooms their room.
He found himself tracking every cluster in his peripheral vision and seeing the mushroom wave from the wind pass by.
As they continued, Reinhard began noticing other things scattered throughout the passage. Small planets with leaf patterns grew in patches where light managed to reach, and he realized they were herbs.
Bugs crawled across bark and earth, so ordinary while others luminescent or unusually large.
The passage began to widen gradually, the walls pulling back to create more space. The area above opened up, revealing more of the blue sky with the light shining down.
Then they erged into Area 9.
The forest here was even more dense than anything they’d encountered so far. Trees grew so close together and their trunks nearly touched, creating walls of wood.
But what truly distinguished this area was the shaded clearing ahead with broken branches lying everywhere.
So branches had fallen against standing trees at angles to form odd ramps, while others had broken but remained partially attached, creating lopsided platforms.
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